


holovision drama

by Larrant



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, M/M, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8834887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larrant/pseuds/Larrant
Summary: There's a bounty out for five million, and he'll be damned if he's not the one to take it.
Or: a brief look into the Star Wars universe before the Force Awakens. In this case, the story of Kylo Ren and the mercenary.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ImperialRemnant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperialRemnant/gifts).



> Forewarning: updates will be once every few weeks, and rather sporadic.

 

 

_The holo-comm shuts off with an abrupt burst of static, and Ren waits for the last of the projection to fade out before he clips the object to his belt. His mind is already jumping ahead of the message- too far ahead, anticipating the inevitable conclusion of his long search before he should._

_The lieutenant standing before him coughs, nervously- barely a cough, as if only to remind Ren of his existence. It’s enough. A pity, as he had almost forgotten the man was ever there. He doesn’t glance at the officer. Neither does he move._

_After several seconds (the nervousness is seeping from the man in waves- fear and anxiety and the man must a recent transfer on the ship, having absorbed all the rumours about the resident Knight of Ren like a sponge)- the lieutenant finally takes the silence as his cue to start speaking._

_“... My Lord,” he starts, and if anything it is a promising beginning. “About the matter involving Garrula the Hutt last week on one of the moons of Nal Hutta-” less promising than how it could have been, “the General wishes to speak with you about resolving the issue and would like to-” no. Not promising at all._

_In fact, he should have expected something like this._

_“If that is all lieutenant, you are dismissed.” He cuts the man off, disinterest splintering in every mechanical vowel- there is acutely no need to hear the rest of what the lieutenant wants to say, nor indeed the rest of the sentence._

_He knows what this is about, and it’s hardly on some conflict on a moon in the Outer Rim. Although that might have a part in it. His lips twist under his mask. No, this isn't about any issue of petty diplomacy at all._

_“And,” he adds, before the lieutenant has managed to flee wholly from the room. He’s already almost out of it, the door having already cut open before him. The man stops in his tracks._

_“Inform the General that if he wishes to speak with me, he should come to me himself.”_

_“... Yes my Lord.”_

_Without waiting to dismiss the lieutenant again, he turns his back, returning to his datapad._

_He has other things to do, and a meeting to arrange._

 

* * *

 

“Are you there?”

His earpiece crackles again with static, his partner’s voice interjecting into his ear with awkward tentativeness. The tentativeness isn’t new- the lack of formality on the other hand, is something the Cathar only started adopting a few months ago.

(' _a few months ago’_ )

“I’m in the village,” he replies, pushing past a pair of trandoshan mercenaries, “Six minutes until I’m in position.”

The sandy road in front of him is almost empty at this time of day- it’s only traders and hawkers, mercenaries and bodyguards with nothing to do but sit idle, play sabacc on rotten and rotting tables. There’s the odd civilian of course, perusing items and purchasing them from tarpaulined stalls, but they are few and far between. It’s still working hours after all, and villages on this planet are only several hundred inhabitants large.

“You really fit in,” Larry says into his ear, sounding relieved.

“Stop looking through my cameras. It uses up all the power.”

On a note that won’t be said aloud: it’s actually true- for a foreigner like him, who looks nothing like the tall humanoids that do nothing but click for speech, he fits in remarkably well. He has the rough clothing and worn armour- the boots that don’t match the rest of the armour. As a matter of fact, nobody would mistake him for anything other than a cheap bodyguard, the same as these poor fucks stuck on this backwater planet.

(as to how we reach this point, we may have a reminder of that scene from two weeks ago: Kael’s getting back to the workshop and Larry is hunching over his bench. so far nothing odd, as odd things go. the cathar’s probably been there all day.

but when he peers over the man’s shoulder, there’s a suit of armour there, on that bench, that looks _oddly_ like someone took _his_ armour and… trashed it.

before throwing it into a waste compactor. and then picking it back up before it could get compacted.

and then throwing it into a sewer.

‘the insides are fine’, he’s assured. and reassured. extremely nervously.

he almost boxes the cathar’s ears and then spends the next few days mutinously threatening to do so.)

“There’s so much sand,” Larry adds unhappily. The cathar could be talking about himself- Larry’s set up in their ship, a couple miles from here- or he could be talking about the scene in front of Kael’s eyes.

It’s true too, though the statement is obvious. Even with a screen in front of his eyes, it feels like the grains are everywhere, and when he walks down the street it’s half a miracle none of it gets through the helmet.

There’s another sound, a crackle and a thump, and a belated sort of yelp. And then, after a moment. “Sorry, I dropped something.”

Kael doesn’t bother with a reply.

The third street down, Kael thinks, and ducks past a tall stand owner. According to intel, the guy should be right here on this planet, at the specified location, in exactly... thirty six minutes. And Larry’s intel is rarely (if ever) wrong. For such an expensive job, they’ve made extra precautions in being precise.

With thirty minutes to spare- precision is his strong point- he arrives at his location, a sandy, empty building that used to be a warehouse but has been out of use for at least several years- or less. The sand weathers away at everything, so it might not have been more than several months ago that this place was abandoned.

Entering through the unlocked back door, he takes up a position next to the window- the plasteel that originally covered it has long since been taken by scavengers, leaving the weather and the sand to blow through and sand the edges of the stone smooth. Everything in the building itself is gone, leaving just the empty husk behind. Even broken furniture had clearly been taken in a flash, to be repaired or broken down and sold for half-creds. There is, however, a speeder bike parked against the wall closest to the exit. He’d left it there only a few hours ago, and already there was a layer of dust and grit all over the thing. He’s gratified nobody found it to steal it.

Through the connection that gave him access to the video feed, Larrant lets out a relieved sigh.

The idiot.

He sets up, shifting himself to a more comfortable position to wait. This isn’t the best place to be, not in terms of vantage points- there are other buildings more suited to his intention of sniping the target, and they might even give him slightly better cover, but he doesn’t want to be spotted in places that are obvious, and this place conveniently has several backdoors leading into the streets, where he’ll hopefully lose whatever tail he might gain.

Word has it the Major is going to be there either alone, or with minimal guards.

So he’s safe, unless they bomb the streets. Considering the means the First Order had, it did not seem _implausible_. Still, every mission had an element of chance. You just tried to account for it, and he's fairly sure the Imperial was coming without an entourage.

It was meant to be a secret meeting, after all.

Settling against a wall, he speaks again, “I’m turning off the radio. I’ll switch back into the comm channel when I need you.”

“Great,” the Cathar sounds vaguely nervous, which is in all honesty not unlike him- the mercenary can almost imagine his hands twisting anxiously in his lap, eyes flickering over the screens on his worktop. Then again, Larrant’s always nervous. “Good luck then.”

“30-70 split, like we agreed,” he says instead, which is pretty terrible for a farewell as potential last words go, but that particular conversation has happened too many times to count now, so anything else would be quite pointless. Without a further word, he cuts off the feed.

A side thought as well, brought on by the rumble of his stomach, and quickly dismissed in favour of the mission- as soon as this job is over, he’s going back to that Cathar’s place and aggressively eating his stew for the next week.

The food on this planet is terrible, anything imported is overpriced as kriff- he'd gone to the market earlier in the day and tried to buy something that wasn't canned food. And found that fruit was twice as expensive as they were even on Shaddaa where nothing- even weeds- grew. Still, after this, he’ll be rich enough not to mind about spare creds.

(before we proceed, a note on Larry’s stew:

  1. It’s the weirdest shit- it’s in a huge cauldron and the heat never gets turned off (it’s too big to sit on a stove so it’s linked up to one of the smaller power lines instead through some miracle of engineering)
  2. (you doesn’t waste that much fuel either, it’s just constantly simmering and slow-cooking. at an excruciatingly slow rate)
  3. You never get to the bottom of the pot: whenever it gets close to half-empty you just add more vegetables and meat and water. When there’s no meat or vegetables or water you out to buy some.
  4. And then sometimes you decide you want a sweet soup so you start putting fruit in. Alongside the remnants of the meat and vegetables. Sometimes you put in sweetener too, if there’s sweetener.
  5. “You” means Larry.
  6. On a technical note, that suggests that at least something in the pot has been there for more than three years.
  7. Which is fine as long as it tastes good.)



He settles down, leaning against the smooth stone as he waits.

There is silence, except for the harsh blow of the wind, and it's calming. Soothing, almost. His rifle is already set up, and now it's just time for his mark to show up.

At the precise hour, he starts to hear a hum of sound. His gaze flickers to the sky where a shuttle is lowering from the sky, waits until it touches down on the sand. Kael breathes a sigh of relief. The Major's there, and that's the hard part over already. He seems precisely on time- or well, a minute after he’s meant to be there, and Kael’s finger tightens on the trigger in anticipation.

The shuttle doors slide open with a hiss, and four stormtroopers stride down the gangway, backs straight and bug-like helmets facing forward. A moment later, an Imperial follows them- a man with yellow hair and a tall, thin frame. He recognizes the hooked nose from his case profile.

As expected. Larry had his uses.

Except. Someone else steps out of the shuttle, a moment behind the Imperial.

A dark clothed figure, helmeted and seemingly unarmoured. But- and this is where Kael freezes, ice in his veins- there’s a hilt displayed at the man's side, gleaming and silver. The strange clothing and the metal implement suddenly click together.

 _Kriff_.

Larry’s intel hadn’t told him a _Knight of fucking Ren would be there_.

For a moment, he is frozen, mind running with equations and probabilities and. _Run_. He needs to run, right now. Leave the mark, it wasn't worth it.

But no, no- the Knight would probably have sensed him already, would know Kael was there and if he didn't know then the force sensitive would know it in a moment. Kael wouldn't get far either way. He needed to take the shot. And-

Even if you were a force sensitive you wouldn’t be able to draw a lightsaber and parry a bolt in that time.

His finger tightens, and he fires. There’s a moment when he thinks- fine, that’s it, fucking _run_ , and is already turning to prepare and kick off from his speederbike.

And then the bolt stops midair.

It hangs, inanimate, frozen by the gloved hand that tightens a fist in the air. The tilt of a bug-like helmet, and Kael finds himself face to face with an empty gaze that watches him beneath a vizor.

The disbelief lasts exactly a milisecond, and then his brain is throwing everything into action and he’s tossing himself back from the window, running for the speeder and kicking open the warehouse door with a booted foot.

He has a time window of what- he doesn't even know, five seconds. He’s never dealt with anyone who could stop a blaster bolt mid-air before. He’s maybe got less than five seconds. He doesn’t think about it.

He can hear the pursuit behind him, and he swerves his speeder in a jagged uneven path to avoid the blaster bolts suddenly sounding. One of them catches onto the the back of his speeder, and with a curse he throws himself from the back of it before it explodes in a mess of metal and fuel.

He lands hard onto the sand, and is already running again- he's fucked up big time, and while self preservation is telling him to call Larrant and tell him to get the fuck in here, sense and a certain amount of selflessness is also telling him to destroy his headpiece and run in the opposite direction of where their ship is.

Kael doesn't get to choose between either before there's a blinding pain in his leg and he falls down, sand and darkness in his vision. _Kriff_. He turns in the same motion- ignoring the pain in his leg- and tries to shoot his pursuers, shots going mostly wide with how he's only holding his rifle with one arm- but two of them hit their mark.

It's not enough, especially not when another blaster bolt hits him right in the chest, and everything goes to black.

(and then his mind, foggy and dull, refocuses)

A stun bolt, he thinks, as soon as he's able to think.

Through the dizziness, he can hear slow footsteps approaching. He blinks, and the black boots that appear in his vision are distorted, swimming. He blinks again. His eyes don't focus.  
  
The last thing he hears is an override of his comm protocols, a nervously familiar voice sharp in his ear- what the voice is saying, he has no idea- and then there’s a sharp pain at the back of his head, and he falls into blissful darkness.

 

 

 


End file.
